


nothing but our winter

by halfcharacter



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Introspection, Post-Blackwatch era, Talon - Freeform, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-14 03:48:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14762042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfcharacter/pseuds/halfcharacter
Summary: He pulled off the mask. Wisps of thick black smoke seeped into the air, slick and oily. He tried to clear his throat.“Gabriel Reyes.”It sounded wrong, like he was breathing life into a man long dead; like he was part of some unholy arcane ritual to summon a ghost that would tear the world asunder. Names had power. He knew that to be true. Names had power, and this one more than most.[a piece for The Reaper Zine]





	nothing but our winter

Gabriel Reyes had always hated the cold.

He had been born in Los Angeles; spent his life messing around the big city. As a kid, he played on the melting tarmac with his friends, shot hoops at the court and hung outside the 7-11 while somebody went in to buy an industrial sized tub of popsicles. He had been known in the community, loved. When he joined the war, everyone came over to send him off, clapping his shoulder and sneaking him more shots of tequila, telling him how great he’d be, how he’d send all those omnics  _ “straight into the ground where they came from.” _

Gabriel Reyes had been loved.

Reaper closed one spiked, gauntleted fist around the lockpicking device in his cloak and pulled it out into the frigid air, idly admiring the way the dark metal froze on contact, turning a pale frosty white. He could feel it through the fabric of his gloves, even with his limited range of sensory nerves. He hissed, and stuck it right under the numberpad and facial recognition scanner.

If this had been thirty years earlier, he could have just blown off the locks with one of his shotguns. The door however, was smooth, cold metal, no physical locking mechanisms of any kind. Pale, blank and faceless. The way Gabriel Reyes imagined the faces of omnics before he blew them up.

The door slid open remarkably silently for one that hadn’t been in use for at least ten years, wind and snow blowing in behind him as Reaper trudged inside and kicked it shut with one boot. He strode over to the nearest electricity panel and flipped it open, tapping in a code from muscle memory and hoping that it still worked.

The lights flickered on slowly. Reaper snapped the panel back shut and glanced around a Blackwatch base he hadn’t seen in over a decade.

The silence was discomforting. He shivered, glancing towards the thermostat.

-50.

But there was no time to waste. Kicking off the residual snow from his boots, he made his way over to the central control panel and pulled out a decrypter. Then he stopped.

Sitting on the panel was a can of soda, perfectly preserved in the stillness. The bright pink and acid green label garishly out of place amidst the gunmetal grey of the rest of the base. Reaper recognized it. It was a brand that Shimada had always drank, despite pleas from Dr. Ziegler regarding its hideously high sugar content.

Cautiously, as if somehow the can would dissipate into the chill, Reaper picked it up. He shook it, gently.

Full and unopened.

He had a sudden overwhelming urge to open the can and drink the contents, and barked out in laughter. It was a short, aborted thing. Laughter was difficult and painful nowadays. Instead, he pierced the side of the can with the spike of his thumb, watched the green liquid seep out of the sides like blood.

A vision came to mind: a soldier, with blond hair rivalling the sun. He laced a steadily approaching omnic with bursts; wiped the sweat from his brow as the robot sank to the dusty ground wheezing, fluid spurting from the wounds in its side. It had rolled over a few times in the dirt, mouth open in a mockery of a dying cry. 

Jack had taken pity on it. Walking over in a few quick strides, he stood over the omnic and shot it once cleanly right through the spine into its vital components.

Reaper crushed the can in his fist. The remaining liquid stained his gauntlet and he dropped the aluminium onto the ground, crushing it under his heavy boot.

He had no time to waste in this frozen dump.

The central command panels mostly relied on thumb and voice recognition. An easy enough thing to maneuver around, when one had the resources of Talon behind them. Slotting the decryptor underneath the mainframe, Reaper sat back on his haunches and waited.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

A few lines of flickered code, and then, in Ares’ familiar tone:  _ thumbprint required. _

Reaper cursed. Had the decryptor malfunctioned? If so, why hadn’t the security protocols been activated? He stood up and peered at the screen through the slits of his mask.

Incompetent Talon idiots. Reaper had a full clip waiting for them when he got back to base.

_ If _ he could go back to base now, given this failure.

He paced around the room for a few moments, considering his options. He could try to shoot the mechanism to bypass it, probably gaining nothing but a malfunctioning piece of equipment and activating security. He could call in and ask for assistance, making himself look like a fool in front of the rest of Talon command. He could try to decrypt it, but he had never been a technological genius himself, and he didn’t want to waste a few hours crouched over a datapad in the cold for no reason.

There was one option he could try. But it was a long shot, and could backfire easily if it triggered the system.

But then again, he mused, what choice did he have?

He unhooked the failed decryptor and slid it back into the folds of his cloak, and drew in a single, short breath. Then he pulled off the gauntlet on his right hand.

Even after all these years the sight of his own hand; mottled black and grey, fingernails broken and bruised, still unnerved him. Some days his body was more akin to a swarm of flying insects than a physical being; the nanomachines sloshing around like some kind of volatile liquid kept in place only by a suit of armour, a hollow mockery of a knight.

Today however, his dying cells had decided to cooperate and were maintaining corporeal form, most likely due to the temperature.

As he pressed his decaying thumb to the pad, he told himself that he was holding his breath because it was cold, and not from nerves.

The red line of a scanner slowly traced what little lines of his thumbprint were left, and then:

_ Stage one complete. Please state your identity _ .

Reaper quickly pulled the gauntlet back over his hand, and reached up to unhook the mask. He hesitated.

But who was here to see him? Absolutely nobody. This base had been deserted for years. Shimada, McCree, Ziegler. They had all left this place to the slowly dropping temperatures and the rising snowfall of the region. Amari, Morrison. 

O'Deorain.

He pulled off the mask. Wisps of thick black smoke seeped into the air, slick and oily. He tried to clear his throat.

“Gabriel Reyes.”

It sounded wrong, like he was breathing life into a man long dead; like he was part of some unholy arcane ritual to summon a ghost that would tear the world asunder. Names had power. He knew that to be true. Names had power, and this one more than most.

For a long second, he thought it hadn’t worked. He opened his mouth to try again.

_ Welcome, Gabriel Reyes. It has been a long time since your last login. We hope you have been well in the meantime. _

God, he wanted to laugh. He wanted to throw his head back and laugh at the absolute ridiculousness of the situation.

They hadn’t wiped his clearance from the system. He didn’t know whether to thank or pity them for the oversight.

Instead, Reaper slid his mask back on and pulled up the files he needed. He saw O'Deorain’s first, and quickly dismissed it, before pausing and pulling it back over onto the screen. Her face stared back at him from the photograph. He dismissed it again. Ally for now.

He rifled through the rest, taking note of how many had been stamped in red. KIA. MIA. INACTIVE.

As he pulled up Shimada and McCree’s files, he could almost hear their voices in his head. Shimada’s wicked synthesized laughter, Jesse humming some tune under his breath, stolen from an old movie.

Overwatch had been recalled, and he knew they would respond to the summons. They had skills, camaraderie, a sense of right and wrong. Of  _ justice _ . 

After all, he hadn’t trained them to be anything less.

He’d kill them one day. A new era was dawning for Overwatch. But Reaper?

Reaper had nothing but the cold left.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to The Reaper Zine for this wonderful opportunity!!
> 
> Name inspired by a quotation from the _Captain America_ comics.
> 
> Thank you for reading and supporting the zine!


End file.
